Word: isis
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...better. One of the world's most powerful intelligence agencies, routinely dubbed a "state within a state," was hardly likely to submit meekly to the efforts of a newly installed government to bring it to heel. Less than 24 hours after it tried to put the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) organization firmly under government control last weekend, the struggling administration of Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani was forced to backpedal under pressure from the military, making clear the limits on the civilian government's power...
...Pakistan has been under growing U.S. pressure to rein in the ISI over its alleged links to Islamist militants, and as Gilani boarded his flight to Washington on Saturday, his government suddenly announced that the ISI - Pakistan's premier military intelligence agency - and its civilian counterpart, the Intelligence Bureau, would be placed under the "administrative, financial and operational control" of the Ministry of Interior. Although until now the ISI had been nominally under the administrative control of the Prime Minister, it has throughout its 60 years operated in notorious secrecy and with negligible civilian oversight. "The move would have opened...
...Sunday, during a London stopover by Gilani and his retinue of ministers and aides, a clarification was issued. The earlier announcement had been "misinterpreted," it said, and had only intended to "re-emphasize more coordination between the Ministry of Interior and ISI in relation to war on terror and internal security." Pressure for the about-face had come from the army, according to Mushahid Hussain, a prominent senator and ally of President Pervez Musharraf, the former military chief whose supporters were beaten at the polls by the current government. "Two major phone calls were put in to the Prime Minister...
Riven by internal disputes and weighed down by the pressures of a fast-souring economy, Gilani's coalition government is seen as too weak to act. Indeed, he seems to have only nominal control of the powerful ISI, Pakistan's security and intelligence apparatus, which has a reputation for acting on its own; and he is seen as ceding many prerogatives of the Prime Minister's office to Zardari and to Rehman Malik, Bhutto's security chief who is now, in effect, Pakistan's Minister of the Interior. Says political analyst Talat Masood: "The present government...
...Other foreign policy analysts suggest that the Kabul embassy attack was not simply a strike at an Indian installation, but also an attempt - by the Taliban, the ISI or anyone else - to undermine President Karzai and anyone who supports him. "[The perpetrators] want to disrupt the current Karzai effort that's being supported by the West," says Uday Bhaskar, deputy director of the Institute for Defense Studies and Analysis. "India is now part of that...